I find happiness in surfing

After four months of solid (but fantastic!) Rica Surf camps, I am now back training with my surf trainer Geancarlo. The final camp finished on Saturday, so I had a relaxing weekend catching up on some much needed rest, and began training again yesterday. I have to say the first session I was a little bit nervous about, because I don’t feel like I have put a lot of mental energy into my surfing in the last months, and definitely don’t feel like I have improved like I wanted to. Geancarlo however was amazing. I had a free surf for 20 minutes (because he told me to go and wake up haha), and then we did some co-ordination exercises on the beach. This is the first time I have ever done this kind of practice. It helps you to work on your mental state while riding the wave, taking you through each manoeuvre slowly from paddling, position as you drop in, to your bottom turn, up to your top turn, and then reading down the line again. All of this we walked through in steps on the beach, on a line which had been drawn representing the line we would be drawing on the wave. He made me repeat each body position five times on each section in a slow movement. For example, the rotation of my shoulders and leading with my hands at the bottom of the wave for my bottom turn, whilst flexing my back knee and putting pressure on my heal and back foot. We did the same practice with the top turn, rotating with my arms and chest to look back down the wave, remembering to stay strong in my legs and engage my abs. What surprised me about this exercise was how much it HURT my legs haha, it burned so much! So what I learnt was that I am clearly not using my legs enough whilst surfing or getting in the right position to make the most out of my bottom turn and get really vertical into the wave. This is something I have been struggling with for a while. Straight after doing this beach exercise, Geancarlo sent me back out into the water to surf again. The results were incredible. The repetition of the body positions on the beach that he made me do again and again until my legs were going to fall off were coming so naturally to me in the water. I could already feel the difference in my bottom turn; the power generated from my back foot and getting my chest turned by leading with my hands and my head. It filled me with so much energy and stoke to be back out in the water and making positive steps to getting better. There was something about yesterday that I feel is going to change my surfing in a serious way. I was actually so stoked on what I had learnt that I surfed all day, even throughout the high tide at midday when there pretty much no waves haha. And today I did the same. I feel so empowered to surf and my passion and love for the sport (which I didn’t think to get any bigger) just tripled. I want to thank Geancarlo for taking the time to train me, I appreciate his help, energy and input so much, and every time I surf with him I become a better surfer, so THANK YOU! I can’t wait to train again tomorrow and the next day and surf and surf and surf…because now at last I can 🙂